CN108476427B

CN108476427B - Wireless access point, method of operating wireless access point, computer-readable storage medium

Info

Publication number: CN108476427B
Application number: CN201680077461.6A
Authority: CN
Inventors: R·埃文登
Original assignee: British Telecommunications PLC
Current assignee: British Telecommunications PLC
Priority date: 2015-12-31
Filing date: 2016-12-22
Publication date: 2021-09-03
Anticipated expiration: 2036-12-22
Also published as: US20190053125A1; US10575239B2; EP3398369B1; EP3398369A1; WO2017114761A1; CN108476427A

Abstract

The invention relates to a wireless access point, a method of operating a wireless access point, and a computer-readable storage medium. In a WLAN with many concurrent users, a wireless access point is configured with information about a set of priority devices, and when network utilization exceeds a certain threshold, the wireless access point is arranged to: the method includes identifying a priority device connected to the WLAN, determining a policy for reconfiguring the WLAN to enable better performance for the priority device, and providing an improvement to the priority device. The change to the WLAN is only applied when the user of the priority device chooses to apply the change, thereby changing the WLAN performance according to user requirements.

Description

Wireless access point, method of operating wireless access point, computer-readable storage medium

Technical Field

The present invention relates to wireless networks, and in particular to methods and apparatus for prioritizing access to network resources when a network link is experiencing congestion.

Background

Wi-Fi and Home network

In wireless communications, the IEEE 802.11 family of standards known as Wi-Fi is a popular protocol for allowing devices to communicate wirelessly using radio wave transmissions. A group of devices that all communicate via a common wireless access point is known as a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN).

Wireless access points are also typically combined with a wired network interface for connecting to wired devices using the ethernet protocol (IEEE 802.3) and a Wide Area Network (WAN) interface, such as an xDSL modem or a wired modem, for connecting to remote networks and resources, such as files and video servers, via an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and then via a wide area network, such as the internet. Such devices are called hubs.

Wi-Fi fairness

In the Wi-Fi standard, all devices forming part of a WLAN communicate using a shared radio frequency channel (currently defined as a frequency in the range of 2.4Ghz or 5 Ghz). Any transmission of a device may be received by other devices within reception range, so if two or more devices transmit at the same time, there will be interference. To avoid the need for a transmission scheduler to coordinate all devices, Wi-Fi devices use carrier sense multiple access-collision avoidance (CSMA-CA) to ensure that a device only attempts to transmit after hearing the transmission channel and determining to be idle. If the channel is in use, the device will "fall back", i.e., wait a short period of time before trying the channel again. Thus, only one device may transmit on the channel at any given time.

Generally, all devices connected to the Wi-Fi network have the same priority. When the channel is considered busy, each device will have a similar timeout period before retesting the channel, and once acquired, the devices will have the same opportunity for data packet transmission. For example, device a is allowed to transmit 500 packets, and device B is also allowed to transmit 500 packets. While such a scheme provides fairness, if the transmission speed of the data packet from device a is much slower than that of device B (e.g., device a is using a slower transmission scheme for robustness), device a will lock on the rest of the channel for a longer period of time, thereby reducing the performance of the overall network.

In a WLAN, due to fairness policies in CSMA-CA and Wi-Fi, the performance for each individual device connected to the WLAN is reduced by contention for the common channel as the number of connected devices increases. There is a greater probability that a channel will be used at any given time, which will result in any one device having to wait longer before it can transmit on that channel.

The large number of access devices connected to a WLAN can be problematic for regular users of the WLAN, for example, other regular home users of the WLAN may have network performance issues if the primary user of the WLAN has a visitor and they all connect their personal device to the WLAN to access network services. For example, conventional users of WLANs may experience significant performance degradation (e.g., slow web page loading, slow file transfer, lost video frames, and/or poor voice quality), which may be frustrating.

Quality of service (QoS)

A device connected to a Wi-Fi network will typically send data packets related to multiple data applications (e.g., file transfer, text, audio, video, etc.). Each type of application has different requirements with respect to latency and accuracy. For example, the speed of file delivery is inferior to the requirement of received data packets that are error free and in order. In contrast, for video streaming applications or voice over internet protocol (VoIP) applications, dropping packets is better than interrupting the received and decoded data packet stream.

To address the different requirements for different services, quality of service (QoS) requirements may be defined for different application types, and packet priorities assigned to packets belonging to each application type. In this way, certain types of traffic (e.g., video packets) to be preferentially delivered over the network from the sender to the recipient have a higher priority than file delivery. This is especially important when the network is congested.

Although QoS provides some control for service prioritization, it is not widely implemented in WLANs. Furthermore, even when QoS is enabled, QoS operates per service and application, not user. Thus, if an accessing user connects their device to a WLAN and uses a video streaming or VoIP service, they will receive a higher priority than a regular user device downloading the file.

Embodiments of the present invention address modifications to the behavior of the hub to provide preferential performance to devices of regular users of the network at the expense of visiting users.

Disclosure of Invention

In one aspect, embodiments of the present invention provide an apparatus for managing a data network connected to a plurality of devices, the apparatus comprising: a network controller for controlling operating parameters of the data network; a data storage section for storing identification information on a group of the plurality of devices, which is a privileged device conforming to a privileged access to the data network; and a network monitor for monitoring performance characteristics of the network, wherein the network monitor is operable to notify the network controller when utilization of the network exceeds a threshold activity level, and in response to the notification, the network controller is operable to: determining that at least one privileged device is currently present on the wireless data network; notifying the privileged device that priority access to the network is available; processing a response from the privileged device; and if the response indicates a request for priority access, changing at least one operating parameter of the network to provide the privileged device with priority access to the network.

In another aspect, an embodiment of the present invention provides a method for managing an access point that maintains a local area network and is connected to a plurality of devices, at least one of which is a licensed device, the method including the steps of: monitoring network utilization of the network; and determining whether a privileged device is currently active on the network when the network utilization is determined to have exceeded a threshold activity level; notifying the determined privileged device that priority access to the network is available, processing a response from the privileged device, and if the response is a request for priority access, changing an operating characteristic of the network to provide the privileged device with priority access to the network.

In another aspect, embodiments of the invention provide a computer program product carrying processor-executable instructions for causing a programmable processor to perform a method according to the invention.

Drawings

Embodiments of the invention will now be described with the aid of the accompanying drawings, in which:

figure 1 schematically illustrates an example wireless network of wireless devices connected to a wireless access point operating in accordance with a first embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 2 schematically illustrates physical components of the wireless access point shown in FIG. 1;

figure 3 schematically illustrates functional components of a wireless access point when operating in accordance with a first embodiment;

fig. 4 is a flow diagram illustrating operation of a wireless access point to provide privileged device within a wireless network with priority access; and

fig. 5 is a flow diagram illustrating operations for generating policies to enable priority access.

Detailed Description

Overview of the System

Fig. 1 illustrates an overview of a network system according to a first embodiment. A user's home 1 or other local network environment is shown, which contains many networking components. A combined routing and wireless access point device 3, such as a BT home hub, or other similar combined routing and wireless access point device (hereinafter hub 3), generates and maintains a wireless network (WLAN)5 to enable data connectivity between multiple user devices 7, such as laptops, computers, smart phones, and tablets, in a home network environment. For ease of illustration, four exemplary devices are shown, two laptops 7a, 7b and two smartphones 7c, 7 d. To better illustrate the first embodiment, the laptops 7a and 7b are exemplary devices of regular users of the WLAN5, while the smartphones 7c and 7d are devices of visitors to the WLAN 5.

In fig. 1, hub 3 and user devices 7 within range of WLAN5 are wirelessly linked using the IEEE 802.11ac variant of the Wi-Fi wireless protocol suite. The WLAN5 is configured in an infrastructure mode in which each device 7 in the network 5 is wirelessly connected to the hub 3 via a Wi-Fi link 9. Due to Wi-Fi transmission power and signal propagation limitations, the range of the wireless network 5 formed by the wireless access points 3 extends around the hub 3 by several tens of meters, and data connectivity is typically limited within the home 1.

As is conventional, the hub 3 also has a copper/fibre data link 11 operating in accordance with the very high bit rate digital subscriber line (VDSL) standard in order to enable communication between devices connected to the WLAN5 and external services that do not form part of the WLAN 5. A copper/fiber data link 11 connects the hub 3 to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) core network 13. The ISP network core 13 provides user management and control features for the user's accounts. The ISP network core 13 is connected to an external Wide Area Network (WAN), such as the internet 15, and thus allows data exchange between the user device and any external services provided by the remote server 17, such as video streaming and web services.

Overview of the operation

During normal operation of the WLAN5, the hub 3 is configured to operate in a conventional manner, thereby giving all user devices 7 the same opportunity to send and receive data in a "fair" manner. Thus, the transmit time window and traffic priority are the same for all devices.

When there are many conventional and access devices 7 connected to the WLAN and using high bandwidth services, contention and congestion will often impact WLAN performance for all users. A typical scenario is a party or social gathering, where all guests require a WLAN to connect their devices to the host.

In this scenario, the temporary increase in the number of connected devices and bandwidth consumption may affect the performance of the WLAN and may result in a loss of performance of conventional devices normally connected to the network, mainly due to network contention.

To overcome this problem, in the first embodiment, the administrator of the hub 3 may assign a device to be regarded as a "privileged" device to the WLAN 5. The hub 3 is configured to monitor network traffic through the WLAN5 and when multiple performance metrics (such as bandwidth) are deemed to have exceeded a predetermined threshold, the hub 3 will generate a policy based on the current state of the WLAN. The hub 3 will then locate the highest ranked privileged device and send a message to the user of that device asking if they wish to have priority access to the network. If the response indicates that the user wants priority access, then a policy is applied to the combination of the hub and the user device connected to the WLAN to enable priority access. Generally, the objective of the policy is to improve WLAN performance for the licensed device by changing at least one operating parameter of the WLAN, such as band steering (band steering), access control, and quality of service.

During the priority access period, the status of the WLAN is continuously monitored and when the entire network is no longer congested, or the privileged device is disconnected from the WLAN, the policy is removed and the WLAN returns to standard operation.

In this way the hub 3 generally functions most of the time, but when network congestion occurs, regular users of the wireless local area network can choose to protect against the congestion so that they can continue to function normally at the expense of transient access to the WLAN performance of the device.

System component

Fig. 2 shows the physical components of the hub 3 in the first embodiment. The hub 3 contains a processor 21 and memory 23 for internal processing and hub functions. For external connectivity, the hub 3 has a Wi-Fi wireless interface 25 and a wired ethernet interface 27 for communicating with other wired local devices within the home network 5, and a WAN interface 29 for communicating with the remote devices 17 via the ISP core 13, the WAN interface 29 being, in this embodiment, a very high bit rate digital subscriber line (VDSL) modem. These components are connected via a system bus 31.

To perform the processing according to the first embodiment, the memory 23 of the hub 3 contains computer program instructions executable by the processor 21 to define a plurality of functional software units. When these instructions are executing, the hub 3 may be seen as comprising a plurality of functional units for collecting and processing data according to the first embodiment.

Fig. 3 shows the functional components of the hub 3. For external connections, the hub 3 has a Wi-Fi interface 41, an ethernet interface 43 and a WAN interface 45, each containing hardware and software functionality corresponding to the physical Wi-Fi interface 25, ethernet interface 27 and VDSL modem 29 respectively. The packet routing function 47 routes packets between different interfaces according to the packet information. The hub 3 also includes a prioritization controller 49 according to the first embodiment to control the operation of the hub.

The prioritization controller 49 is responsible for monitoring the status of connections to various devices and determining when to provide priority access to certain devices in order to maintain the quality of experience of privileged devices (such as devices of regular local users), perhaps at the expense of accessing the devices.

To determine the WLAN5 status, the prioritization controller 49 includes a Wi-Fi throughput measurement monitor 51. This measures the aggregate throughput of all devices that send and receive data via the WLAN.

In addition to throughput, metrics on the radio interface are measured by a radio performance measurement monitor 53. The unit measures physical characteristics of the radio signal, such as signal-to-noise ratio and signal strength.

The priority access determination unit 55 processes measurement data obtained from the Wi-Fi and radio monitors 51, 53 to determine the status of the WLAN. The unit compares the information received from the Wi-Fi throughput measurement monitor 51 to the system usage threshold stored in the threshold store 57 to determine when the WLAN starts to become congested and overloaded user traffic.

The threshold value stored in the threshold value storage section 57 is set by the system administrator of the hub 3 according to how strongly the system should respond to increased network utilization. In this embodiment, the threshold for throughput is set to 70% of the maximum throughput capacity of the network, while the threshold for signal-to-noise ratio is set to 30 dB.

Since the available bandwidth of the WLAN varies over time due to external interference and the relative position of the device 7 with respect to the hub 3, the information from the radio performance measurement monitor 53 is compared with other thresholds, such as upstream and downstream retry rates and/or PHY rates, to provide further information about the status of the WLAN, and the resulting information is also used to determine a policy for enabling prioritized access.

The priority access determination unit 55 compares the data from the performance measurements with stored thresholds to determine whether the WLAN5 has reached a utilization level whereby prioritization may be in favor of authorized users.

In order to enable the priority access determining unit 55 to determine the identities of licensed devices on the WLAN5, the licensed device list 59 contains an ordered list of devices that are eligible for priority access within the network (hereinafter referred to as licensed devices). For example, the entry in the privileged device list 59 is pre-populated by the system administrator to indicate that laptop 7a is the highest priority device and laptop 7b is the second highest priority device. The smartphones 7c and 7d are access devices and therefore have no corresponding entry in the list 59.

The priority access determining unit 55 is configured to find the currently highest priority licensed device by comparing the group of devices determined by the WiFi interface 41 to be connected to the WLAN5 with the licensed device list. In this embodiment, the priority access option is provided only to the currently highest ranked licensed device, regardless of the number of licensed devices connected to the WLAN. In this example, although the devices 7a and 7b are connected to the WLAN, the device 7a is determined as the highest licensed device listed in the licensed device list 59.

In addition to identifying network congestion and privileged devices, the priority access determination unit 55 is further configured to generate candidate policies to enable privileged devices to preferentially access the WLAN. The policy defines changes to a number of operating parameters of the WLAN 5.

For example:

band steering-move devices between available Wi-Fi bands in order to give privileged devices more airtime (airtime).

Quality of service control-changing the relative downstream QoS of privileged devices so that they get more talk time than other devices.

Access control-prevents certain devices from accessing the WLAN by detaching them from the band in which they are located (i.e. kicking them out) and not letting them re-associate on that band until congestion has relieved.

A combination of WLAN operating parameters is selected based on current network conditions and characteristics of licensed devices.

In this embodiment, priority access is not automatically applied to licensed devices and WLANs. This is to allow the context of the user to determine if priority access is required. For example, if a user of a licensed device is participating in a video call or watching streaming video, the degradation of the WLAN will be disruptive and thus licensed access will be beneficial. However, if the privileged device is used only for applications where low bandwidth or latency is not important (e.g., sending instant messages, reading web pages, or some file transfers), the user may not consider the need for priority access and therefore may not need to change the operating parameters of the WLAN. Applying priority access incurs computational overhead and can potentially affect the performance of all unlicensed devices, so it may be beneficial not to apply priority access when the user of a licensed device knows that accessing the device needs to do something important.

The prioritization controller 49 has a device interface 61 for communicating with WLAN devices. The device interface is configured to generate and send a message to the privileged device asking the user if they wish to have priority access. If the device interface 61 receives a response indicating that priority service is required from the user of the device 7a, the priority access determining unit 55 applies the generated policy to the configuration of the hub 3 and the authorized device 7a to improve the service for the authorized device 7 a. The device interface 61 is used to send configuration instructions to the privileged device 7a and, in some cases, to other non-privileged devices connected to the WLAN.

Once the priority access status has been activated, the priority access determination unit 55 updates the data in the priority status store 63 to indicate the details of the operating parameters applied in the policy and the identity of the privileged device that is receiving priority access for which the priority status is active.

In case the response message indicates that the user does not want to activate priority access, then the priority access condition is not enabled. An entry is placed in the priority status store 63 to indicate that there is no active priority access policy.

In this embodiment, the priority access state is enabled based on network conditions. Therefore, the duration of the priority access is not fixed, but is determined by a decrease in network utilization.

Wi-Fi throughput measurement monitor 51 and radio performance monitor 53 are configured to run continuously to measure Wi-Fi throughput and the current state of radio performance.

The priority access determination unit 55 periodically receives metrics from the Wi-Fi throughput measurement monitor 51 and the radio performance monitor 53 and compares these values to different lower thresholds stored in the threshold storage 57.

When it is determined that the combined WLAN activity metric is below the threshold, then no priority access is required and therefore the prioritization technique applied by the hub 3 is cancelled or revoked.

Furthermore, if the device 7a disconnects from the WLAN, the priority access is cancelled and the priority access determiner unit 55 checks the list of connected devices against the list of privileged devices to determine the new highest-ranked privileged device, which in this example is the laptop device 7 b. When device 7a disconnects, if network activity increases beyond a threshold, then priority access will be provided to device 7 b. When the device 7a reconnects, the priority access determining unit 55 will resume providing priority access to the device 7 a.

Flow chart

Fig. 4 shows the operation of the priority access determining unit 55 in the first embodiment. At regular intervals, the prioritization controller is arranged to perform the following processing. In this embodiment, the polling period is 300 seconds to maintain a balance between processing overhead and network response time.

In step s1, the priority access determination unit 55 compares the set of devices currently connected to the WLAN with the device priority list 59 to determine whether any privileged device is currently connected to the WLAN 5.

If there is no connected privileged device, then a clean-up subroutine is executed in step s3, if necessary. The priority access determining unit 55 checks in step s3 whether any policy is active. If there are no active policies, then the process ends.

Alternatively, if the priority status store indicates that a policy is active, then the policy is disabled/revoked at step s5 because any device previously deemed privileged has been disconnected from the network and no longer requires priority access. After step s5, the process moves to step s25, which will be described later.

If step s1 indicates that the licensed device is connected to a WLAN, the process moves to step s7, where Wi-Fi utilization for the Wi-Fi band is measured by both Wi-Fi throughput measurement 51 and radio performance measurement unit 53. These units collect a plurality of metrics, including:

metric per frequency band

Omicron Total air utilization for each band (air utilization)

List of associated devices per band

Metric per device

Omicron Current band

O aerial utilization rate

RSSI of omicron device

Omicron PHY Rate (upstream and downstream)

Omicron data rate (upstream and downstream)

Omicron retry (upstream and downstream)

In step s9, the priority access determination unit 55 retrieves various activity thresholds from the threshold storage 57 and compares the measured data with the thresholds. If the current Wi-Fi utilization value is below the threshold, then the process also moves to step s3, which is described above. Because there are privileged devices connected, but the network utilization is below various thresholds, any previously applied prioritized access conditions are no longer needed and should be removed/revoked for the WLAN to perform in a conventional manner. After step s3 and possibly s5, the process ends.

However, if the utilization value is higher than the threshold value in step s9, the highest level of connected privileged device is identified in step s 11. In the above example, the device/laptop 7a is the highest ranking device.

Once identified, processing moves to step s13 where the priority access determination unit 55 attempts to generate a policy for action that may improve network performance for the privileged device.

Fig. 5 shows more detail for this step.

In step s131, the Wi-Fi utilization is again compared to the threshold, and if the threshold is no longer exceeded, the process ends.

However, if the threshold is exceeded, then in step s133, a test is performed to determine whether the licensed device is connected to a frequency band with high utilization. If not, the process ends.

If the privileged device is connected to a frequency band that experiences high utilization, the priority access determination unit 55 will determine whether the throughput of the privileged device can be improved. In this embodiment, there are a number of operating parameters that can be changed by policy:

band steering

O move other devices to different Wi-Fi bands to release capacity on congested bands;

-moving licensed devices to different Wi-Fi bands with more capacity;

quality of service

Enhancing priority of WLAN downlink traffic of licensed devices

Lowering priority of WLAN downlink traffic of other devices

Access control

-sending a Wi-Fi detach command to other devices using the same frequency band as the licensed device, and then rejecting subsequent connection requests from the detached device on the frequency band used by the licensed device for a preset period of time, or until the licensed device disconnects from the WLAN.

Band steering

In step s135, a test is performed to determine whether the hub 3 itself supports dual-band Wi-Fi, i.e. operates on the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz bands. If the hub does not support dual-band Wi-Fi, the process proceeds to step s147, which relates to QoS, as will be explained later.

If the hub supports dual-band Wi-Fi, then at step s137 the licensed device is tested to determine if it supports dual-band Wi-Fi. If both the hub 3 and licensed devices support dual-band Wi-Fi, then in step s139 a further test is performed to determine if the Wi-Fi band not used by the licensed device has low utilization. If there is another frequency band with low utilization, then in step s141 a part of the policy is formed to move the licensed device to another frequency band that is not heavily used. The process then proceeds to step s 143. In contrast, if it is determined in step s139 that there is a high utilization rate on another frequency band, it makes no sense to move the licensed device to the other frequency band, so step s141 is skipped and the process moves directly to step s 143.

In step s143 a test is performed to see if the other dual band device is connected to the same band as the licensed device (or the same new band if step s141 is performed). This would involve testing each connected device in a conventional manner. If step s143 determines that dual band devices are present on the same frequency band, then the process moves to step s145 where policy rules are generated to move the dual band devices to another frequency band to minimize contention on the licensed device frequency band in step s 145. After this step, the band-steering operation parameters have been completed, and the process moves to step s 147. If there are no other dual band devices on the same band as the licensed device and so the process moves directly to step s 147.

QoS

After the Wi-Fi band-steering policy settings have been tested and set in steps s135 to s143, the QoS policy operating parameter options are tested. In step s147, the hub 3 is tested to determine if it supports the QoS option. If the hub does not support QoS control then processing moves to an access control policy option which will be described later in relation to step s 153.

If QoS is supported, the policy is updated with a setting for lowering the priority of data traffic generated by or delivered to the unlicensed device in step s 149. Next, at step s151, the policy is updated to raise the priority level of all upstream and downstream traffic for the privileged device. Processing then moves to step s 153.

Access control

In step s153, the hub 3 is tested to determine whether it supports access control. The access control operational parameters will disable certain devices from the WLAN in order to reduce the number of devices on the WLAN, thereby improving the performance/experience of the remaining devices.

If the hub 3 does not support access control, the process ends for policy generation and the process returns to fig. 4. Alternatively, if the hub supports access control, then in step s155 the policy settings are updated to enable access control by the hub to some of the devices in the WLAN. This may be accomplished in a number of ways, for example, by identifying the device with the lowest utilization and blocking access for a set period of time. The process then ends for policy generation and the process returns to fig. 4.

Returning to fig. 4, following the processing of step s13 described above and shown in fig. 5, a test is performed in step s15 to check whether the design strategy was successful. If there is no generated policy, the process moves to step s25, described later, and the current network conditions are maintained.

If a policy has been generated, then in step s17 the device interface 61 sends a message to the identified highest-level connected privileged device asking the user of that device if they want to enable the privileged access mode for their privileged device.

In a basic configuration, this message would provide a simple choice for the identified privileged device, such as:

"Wi-Fi congestion detected. Do you want the AP to improve your network access settings at the expense of other devices?

[ YES ]/[ NO ]) "

For some privileged devices, the administrator of the WLAN may have specified that the prioritized controllers should interact in an advanced mode. In this case, the message provides the user with a degree of control over how to improve their network access. For example:

"Wi-Fi congestion detected. Selecting one option:

moving your device to the less congested Wi-Fi band (band steering)

Move the specified device to another Wi-Fi band:

omicron [ connected device 1]

Omicron [ connected device 2]

Omicron [ connected device N ]

Raise your traffic priority level relative to the designated device:

omicron [ connected device 1]

Omicron [ connected device 2]

Omicron [ connected device N ]

Remove designated devices from the congested Wi-Fi band and deny subsequent access when privileged mode is active:

omicron [ connected device 1]

Omicron [ connected device 2]

Omicron [ connected device N ]

In this advanced mode, it is assumed that the user has a better understanding of the network, and therefore the options selected by the user are used as policies for the system.

There are various ways in which the device interface 61 may communicate with the user of the privileged device. In this embodiment, to minimize changes to the privileged device 7, the device interface 61 is configured to simply send an email to the privileged device, since it is assumed that the user is actively using the privileged device and will therefore be able to access the email client on the device. The selectable message option is configured as a link that will result in a response being sent to the hub identifying the user-selected option.

In step s19, the device interface receives a response from the highest ranked privileged device and, in step s21, processes the response message to determine whether the user agrees to priority access. As explained above, the context of the user and the services active on the privileged device will determine whether priority access is required.

If the response indicates that priority access is not required, then in step s25, the priority status storage 63 is updated and the process ends. If, however, the user does require priority access, then in step s23 the generated policy settings are applied to hub 3, the privileged devices on the network, and other non-privileged devices. The prioritization controller 49 configures any QoS and access control operating parameters on the hub and delivers band steering instructions for licensed and unlicensed devices via the device interface 61 to implement those operating parameters in a conventional manner.

In step s25, the priority status store is updated to record changes to the WLAN configuration. The updating depends on the previous step of the operational flow diagram.

If a new policy is created and applied after step s23, the priority status store 63 records the details of the new policy and associated privileged device;

if, after step s21, the response message indicates that prioritized access is not required, then an entry is made in the priority status store 63 to record the rejection and the device identification;

after step s15, if a policy cannot be designed, an entry is made in the priority status store 63 to record that a policy cannot be generated for the privileged device; and

after step s5, the priority status storage 63 is updated to indicate that the previous priority status is no longer active.

After the priority status storage section 63 has been updated, the process of the prioritization controller ends for this monitoring period.

With the above process, the WLAN may provide a subset of devices of the network that are considered privileged devices with the option to improve services in response to the network utilization level. However, the decision whether to implement an improved service depends on the user approving a licensed device for options that may be based on the user's context.

Although the operation of the prioritization controller is particularly effective when a large number of access devices join the WLAN, it is equally applicable when there are no access devices on the WLAN but there is high network utilization between a set of regular WLAN devices or even between a set of privileged devices. In each case, the prioritization controller will determine a policy for the highest privileged device (most privileged device) and provide the user of the highest privileged device with an option to improve network performance for that device at the expense of other devices.

Alternatives and modifications

In this embodiment, the threshold for congestion is a fixed value. In the alternative, the threshold value may have different values at different times of the day or on different days. For example, licensed devices may be prioritized during a user-set operating time or based on a time read from an Electronic Program Guide (EPG) so that certain TV programs get priority for licensed devices.

In this embodiment, the process for providing priority access is performed whenever there is an increase in network traffic that exceeds a threshold. The priority access condition is maintained until the network utilization rate is lowered or when the next polling period of the priority access determining unit determines that the priority device is no longer connected to the WLAN.

This may result in the device having a period of priority access even if no longer needed. In an alternative, the priority access determining unit starts a clock timer defining a maximum period of time during which priority access should be provided to the device when the device is given the priority access condition.

Similarly, in a further alternative, when a device is provided priority access, a minimum timer is activated so that priority access is not removed until the minimum period expires. This helps prevent a large number of messages being sent to a device when access to the WLAN is restricted due to congestion, which may cause the device to disconnect and reconnect due to congestion.

In this embodiment, the device interface is configured to send an email to the user of the privileged device. It should be clear to the skilled person that other options are also possible. In an alternative, the hub is arranged to use both HTTP and HTML schemes so that the options appear in the browser as interstitial HTML pages or HTTP redirects.

In a further alternative, the device interface uses push notifications. The user device will need an application registered on a third party push notification server, such as the Google Cloud Messaging platform GCM or the iOS Apple push notification service. When the user interface wishes to send a notification, it creates a hub-based HTML page with the notification content and sends the URL for the HTML page to the third party push notification server. The third party push notification server will then forward the notification to the device using standard push notification mechanisms. Once the device receives the push notification, a pop-up message appears on the device screen, which presents the user with a URL that the user can access to cause the notification HTML page to be displayed on the device Web browser.

In a further alternative, a proprietary system is used, whereby a dedicated app is pre-installed on each priority device. The app is configured to listen to a predetermined TCP/UDP port and the notifier is configured to contact the priority device via its predetermined TCP/UDP port with the notification. At the recipient user device, the notification is displayed and when the user selects an option, the device sends a response back to the notifier via the TCP/UDP port.

Another benefit of dedicated apps is that users of privileged devices may preemptively request priority access in anticipation of increased network activity. In this way, priority access may be enabled before the access device connects or causes activity to proliferate, or as soon as activity increases.

In this embodiment, the priority access determination unit is configured to identify a single highest-level licensed device and provide priority access to the single highest-level licensed device. In a modification, priority access may be provided for more than one device.

In this embodiment, privileged Wi-Fi devices are provided with privileged access, however, similar techniques may be applied to any shared channel network architecture (such as ethernet or another wireless network protocol).

Claims

1. A wireless access point for managing a wireless local area network connected to a plurality of wireless client devices, the wireless access point comprising:

a network controller for controlling operating parameters of the wireless local area network;

a data storage section for storing identification information on a group of the plurality of wireless client devices that are privileged devices conforming to priority access to the wireless local area network; and

a network monitor for monitoring performance characteristics of the wireless local area network,

wherein the network monitor is operable to inform the network controller when the utilization of the wireless local area network exceeds a threshold activity level, and

in response to the notification, the network controller is operable to:

accessing the data store to determine that at least one privileged device is currently present on the wireless local area network;

notifying the privileged device that priority access to the wireless local area network is available;

processing a response from the privileged device; and is

Changing at least one operating parameter of the wireless local area network to provide the privileged device with priority access to the wireless local area network if the response indicates a request for priority access, and wherein,

the network monitor is further operable to notify the network controller when the network utilization falls below a second threshold activity level, and in response, the network controller is operable to disable the priority access to the privileged device.

2. The wireless access point of claim 1, wherein the network controller is operable to disable the priority access when the privileged device is determined to have disconnected from the wireless local area network.

3. A wireless access point according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the network controller is operable to generate a policy containing a set of operating parameters to be changed in order to implement the priority access.

4. The wireless access point of claim 1 or 2, wherein the at least one operating parameter comprises at least one of wireless network band steering, quality of service, and/or access control.

5. A wireless access point according to claim 1 or 2, wherein different thresholds are used by the network monitor at different times.

6. A method for operating a wireless access point that maintains a wireless local area network and connects to a plurality of wireless client devices, at least one of which is a licensed device, the wireless access point performing the steps of:

monitoring network utilization of the wireless local area network; and

when the network utilization is determined to have exceeded a threshold activity level,

accessing a data store for storing identification information about a set of the plurality of wireless client devices that are privileged devices that are eligible for priority access to the wireless local area network;

determining whether a privileged device is currently active on the wireless local area network;

notifying the determined privileged device that priority access to the wireless local area network is available,

processes responses from the privileged device, and

if the response is a request for priority access, then at least one operating parameter of the wireless local area network is changed to provide the privileged device with priority access to the wireless local area network, and

in the event that priority access has been provided to the privileged device: disabling the priority access for the privileged device when the network utilization falls below a second threshold activity level.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising the steps of: determining when the privileged device has been disconnected from the wireless local area network and disabling the priority access.

8. The method according to claim 6 or 7, further comprising the steps of: a policy is generated containing a set of operating parameters to be changed to implement the priority access.

9. The method of claim 6 or 7, wherein the at least one operating parameter comprises at least one of wireless data network band steering, quality of service, and/or access control.

10. A method according to claim 6 or 7, wherein different thresholds are used at different times.

11. A computer readable storage medium storing processor-executable instructions for causing a programmable processor to perform the method of any one of claims 6 to 10.